Below are some comments by the author of the graph I linked to in the Fear Manach post recently. I thought you may have some opinions?
Hi, I’m the ‘author’ (so to speak!) of that graph. I find it gratifying that others are interested in what it might be showing, so I’d like to expand on how I’d interpret it – particularly in relation to the ‘Northern Irish’ category.
The commenter who posted it on Slugger O’Toole seemed sceptical of my claim that most people choosing ‘Northern Irish’ were Catholic or of a Catholic background, but to me that fact seems obvious when a) British identity and Protestant background match so perfectly, meaning that aside from a small overlap (6%) with NI identity, the latter have to come from elsewhere, and b) ‘Irish’ identity only makes up a proportion of the Catholic population, so they also have to go elsewhere.
It’s important to remember there are two sets of figures, one with unique combinations of choices (i.e. Irish AND) in class 1, and the other being what I used for the graph which measures how many choose a particular identity alone or in combination (i.e. Irish OR British OR Northern Irish) in class 2. I feel safe using the latter because only one combination reached a significant level, that of British AND Northern Irish ONLY (e.g., ‘Irish’ and ‘Irish only’ are virtually the same)
Unpacking the choice of Northern Irish identity in class 2, I can see that while ‘British and Northern Irish only’ climbs significantly in the more Protestant-dominated areas, the ‘Northern Irish only’ figure drops somewhat also – hence the overall class 2 figure seems remarkably steady, and I would say doesn’t correlate with Protestant background (aside from the subset who choose it alongside British identity), or anything else really. I do also see that ‘Northern Irish only’ also drops in areas with high Irish identity (e.g. Derry, but also significantly Belfast which bucks the trend somewhat), which fits the idea that Northern Irish v. Irish is the choice amongst Catholic communities.
To address sammymcnally’s points, ‘Northern Irish’ is not correlated with British/Protestant identity (the highest figure for it, in class 2, is 34% in Down which is 63% Catholic, followed then by North Down at 33% which is 73% Protestant) and fluctuates within such a narrow range, statistically speaking, that it’s probably not worth divining any pattern in it. The combination of British and Northern Irish does increase along with the proportion of British only, but in a way it’s to be expected that the more people who are identifying as British anyway, the more would identify as both British and Northern Irish. The remarkable thing is really that the figure overall is so flat; even the ‘Northern Irish only’ figure which seems to exclude those of British/Protestant identities, while it is on a downward trend as those increase, does so much more shallowly than the Irish or Catholic figures – and even surpasses each at their 16% and 14% levels respectively. (although as I may have said the increase in ‘no religion’ in highly Protestant areas suggests perhaps a hidden Catholic figure).
One way of putting it could be that Catholic background = Irish + Northern Irish only while Protestant background = British only + British and Northern Irish only, although this breaks down somewhat as the Catholic figures drop below 25% – of course there are some people of neither background which would have to be factored in too. But it does seem that in the graph when Irish identity rises – relative to the non-Protestant population, that is – Northern Irish (only) identity drops and vice versa, within a relatively stable band or proportion of the total population, in diverse areas. Which is a little weird and I don’t fully understand how that could work in terms of either statistics or demographics, but it seems to be the case.
Hardcore,
Firstly I think ‘some’ of the calculations I posted were wrong.(done in less than half an hour after receiving details form BD) – excuses, excuses – and will need to look again at them.
Correlating the term ‘Norhern Irish’ with the Cat/Nat population doe not mean that we can extrapolate that those who responded in this way are in favour of a UI – do you agree with that?
There is nothing in the Census figures that I think that we can extrapolate to a position on consitutional affinity other than those responses that are unamigbious ie those that include “British” or “Irish” and therefore would you agree that ‘northern Irish’ (the not knowns/didnt says) should therefore be excluded.
On that basis i.e. what we can reasonably stand over (statisically speaking) – these results do not suggest that it would be a sensbile idea to argue for a border poll – if you were in favour of a UI – do you agree with that?
Definitely, the ‘identity question’ is not the same as the constitutional question and I wouldn’t presume to interpret it in that fashion. As a Southerner (Dublin) with a Protestant background (Church of Ireland) I’m well aware that a variety of identities exist on the island that don’t necessarily neatly map onto political opinions; I’d consider it valid for someone in the North to define themselves as both Irish and British, as 1.6% of people did (this Venn diagram illustrates the combinations quite neatly, while also showing the extent to which a Venn diagram is unnecessary as most people’s choices didn’t overlap: https://twitter.com/gavreilly/status/278505638940782593/photo/1 ).
That said, it’s a little harder to conceive of a ‘Northern Irish’ identity (in preference to an ‘Irish’ one) that would match with support for unification, even/especially in Catholic/Nationalist communities (by the way, as a non-Northerner, I’m curious as what you consider to constitute ‘Nationalist’ communities, other than Catholicism? Is it just a more secular description, and if so how does it match with a potential absence of sentiment for the main ‘nationalist’ project?). But you’re right that there’s nothing in the statistics themselves that allows one to draw such conclusions – they’re questions about self-identity, not political opinions. There may be some merit in associating ‘Irish’ and ‘British’ with clear constitutional positions, but then again there may not – surely there’s a difference between expressing identity as it relates to oneself, and choosing or voting for the constitutional position of society as a whole? Likewise, I’m not sure ‘Northern Irish’ respondents should necessarily be excluded from UI support solely on that basis, but there’s no solid reason to include them either.
Ultimately I made the graph to try and ‘jump the gun’ on some of the news/commentary speculation about who the ‘Northern Irish’ are – since the cross-tabulations haven’t been released it, it’s only correlations to go on, which work surprisingly (depressingly?) well when it comes to the traditional religious/cultural cleavages but become more complex when it comes to this ‘new’(ish) identity. (Don’t worry about mistakes – I’ve spent far too much time on it myself, and part of the usefulness of making a graph is that it visualises the extent to which things really do differ rather than just having your eye caught by a few numbers in a table). In a way it seems to make sense – one would expect that levels of patriotism, or self-identification with one’s own country (rather than Britain or Ireland) would be fairly constant across disparate areas in any state, and the divisions in NI society are what make that seem so unexpected. But as a minority identity it still has to interact with the larger demographic factors (namely religion), and that’s what I’m still trying to work out.
I may be straying into the area of voodoo statistics, but I’ve now worked out that if ‘Northern Irish only’ and ‘Irish only’ identities are graphed as a proportion of the non-Protestant population (because simply using ‘Catholic’ gets a little messy, and the converse association, between Protestant and British, is so strong) then it produces a clear scissor graph (i.e. crossing like an X). As the non-Protestant proportion of the population declines (i.e. going left to right in my original graph), the ‘Northern Irish’ proportion of THAT group increases and the ‘Irish’ proportion declines. So 77% of the population in Derry are non-Protestant, and 67% of THOSE are ‘Irish only’ (more accurately the ratio of ‘Irish only’ to non-Protestant is 67%, since they’re not necessarily coterminous, but for the purpose of argument I’ll assume they are or close enough) and only 25% are Northern Irish only. In the middle in Armagh the same figures are 52%, 39% and 58% (note how the latter two sum close to 100%), and in the extreme in Carrickfergus they are 20%, 83% and 15%. So as the proportion of non-Protestants drops in line with an increase in Britishness, the proportion of Northern Irish increase in the remainder – more or less in lockstep, which explains the constancy overall – and ‘Irish only’ decreases – no doubt one is more likely to express an Irish identity in an area which is more Catholic/’Nationalist’.
That’s what I’ve got after looking at the figures again – as you can probably tell I’m perhaps more interested in the identity question itself than the constitutional implications, but it was a politics degree that got me interested in this sort of thing anyway.
Hardcode,
re. “I’m curious as what you consider to constitute ‘Nationalist’ communities, other than Catholicism? Is it just a more secular description, and if so how does it match with a potential absence of sentiment for the main ‘nationalist’ project?).”
I prefer to speak in terms of Nats and Unionists as religion is simply a proxy for establishing constitutional allegiance and although there is little doubt there there a very strong relationship between voting intentions and religious background – some (Unionists mainly) characterise ‘religious’ analysis (disingenously in my opinion) as purely sectarian headcounting – in order to dismiss it.
From a statistical point of view – and I’m not sure whether there is a single simple answer to this question – but do you know if it is statistically robust to use the ‘reliable’ figures we do have i.e. the ‘irish’ and ‘British’ responses to Nat Identity to establish what the census tells us about the percentage(and perhaps the statistical probability if a poll here held) support for a UI but caveat the answer by assigning a marging of error or other such cunning statistical device to cater for the not knowns/didnt says i.e. the Northern Irish – on the basis that we dont know how to interpet them – making the assumption that those ‘irish’ and ‘British’ repsonses (and those with Northern Irish plus one of ‘irish’ and ‘British’ ) are reliable as indicators of constitutional allegiance/ambition?
sammy – I see what you’re saying, but to me it seems that ‘constitutional allegiance’ is equally a proxy for religion (at least in the case of British and Protestant; whereas Catholics are divided between Irish and Northern Irish which raises the question of what exactly those identities reflect in constitutional terms, if they are to get that far).
I’m not so sure about describing Northern Irish as ‘don’t knows’ on the constitutional question – my gut reaction on the outside is that it expresses not just an agnosticism on the Irish/British dichotomy but an identification with Northern Ireland as a separate constitutional entity of some kind – probably still within the UK, but with legislative autonomy and parity of esteem for the different national traditions (of course recent events are showing some of the hollowness of that). And quite likely plenty of those in the ‘nationalist’ community, especially those not with close links over the border, don’t want to touch the current state of governance in the Republic with a barge pole – they’d rather live in a self-governing Northern Ireland (and may also be aware that many in the Republic aren’t particularly keen on unification either). but all that’s pure political speculation on my part, there’s nothing in the statistics that really supports any description other than ‘Northern Irish’ is the self-assigned identity of a sizeable minority: and any constitutional question would be asking in any case where ‘Northern Ireland’ should be situated, so they could break in any direction.
as for your specific question, the short answer (bearing in mind I’m not really a trained statistician) is therefore no. the long answer is, obviously, that it raises further questions: what would the turnout be like, in each group? how many of each group are even eligible to vote? (bangordub seems to do a lot on electoral demographics, so I’ll defer to him on that; I’m not sure and I didn’t see whether in the census people answered for their children’s religion and national identity, but I saw no indication otherwise) even assuming those questions were answered, and that Irish & British mapped to their presumed positions, you’d be left with three possible scenarios: the ‘Northern Irish’ didn’t vote, or split in line with the rest of the population, converting the existing British plurality into a majority; they vote for the status quo, also a British ‘win’; or they vote with the rest of the Irish/Nationalist community, which is Gerry Adams’ vision of “46 per cent with some form of Irish-only identity”. But I doubt the last would happen to that extent, or that ‘some form of Irish-only identity’ doesn’t encompass more than one distinct constitutional position. There are just too many variables there to extrapolate from the Irish and British only figures to a constitutional position for the whole community, at least without being able to make a confident educated guess about where the ‘Northern Irish’ contingent would fall.
hardcore,
In relation to the ‘dont knows’ and agnosticism – I rather meant that we dont know what they think about a UI not that they dont know.
As to whether it is wise to seek a border poll – I have had this to say on the subject elsewhere (see below) – I think Gerry is just bluffing – certainly if he gets his way and walks in to Patrick Powers he will get very good odds for a fistful of (northern bank) notes.
http://judecollinsjournalist.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/no-poll-here-referenda-and-how-to-avoid.html
Hi Hardcore,
Interesting analysis re the figures and some of the correlations that come up when you have sifted through them. In my gut I would largely concur with your findings as well, however, I do feel there should be some separate analysis on these people who have noted that they are ‘Northern Irish’ and try and get some more forthright thoughts on constitutional and political matters in the North so we have some clarity. This is probably best done by an academic, NOT the NIO, Lucid Talk or Strategen O’Toole, sorry but they are untrustworthy. For me, the most interesting of the results was the fact that less than 50% of the population designate as ‘British, does this mean that less than half of the population want to stay in the Union? We don’t know but will have to figure out what ‘Northern Irish’ means in the full.
As a thought, I have found it funny how people who vote for Nat parties are often questioned as to whether or not they would vote for a UI (you would imagine their political preference in the main would be the dead give away, right?) but this is never the case with unionist voters, during good times on either side of the border, or bad; I do wonder why…
Gerry Adams has an opinion on the identity question results;
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2013/0116/1224328903261.html#.UPZxEdVP3MA.twitter
I’ve done up another graph, this time stacking the class 1 (distinct) national identities and overlaying a line for the proportion of non-Protestants. It shows the same correlation between British identity (with and without Northern Irish identity) and Protestant background, but I think it better illustrates the Northern Irish only part:
photo/1
As you can see the Northern Irish only (in white) remains pretty steady as it takes up a larger part of the non-Protestant community; although at the end the number of Protestants in North Down-Ards-Carrickfergus actually exceeds the number of those with a British identity, so it seems some Protestants there may be describing themselves as Northern Irish only? Down itself is a bit of an outlier, having fewer Protestants than people with even British only identity – it has more with ‘No religion’ than its neighbours, however, and slightly more Catholics too.
(The gap at the top of the graph below the 100% is the other combinations of UK/Irish identities that don’t add up to much, so I omitted them for clarity. I put the ‘other’ category on the bottom on the basis that, while some of them may be Protestant, they’re more likely not to be)
(NB* I have inserted the new graph linked to above into the original post. Bangorub) Correction, I cannot insert the file type, please click on the link above
Anybody see the Nolan Show tonight? Or should I say the Bimbo Wilson and Jamie Bryson fan club. That studio audience must have been at least 80% loyalist. Never thought I would feel sorry for a Alliance Party member but the way they treated poor Gerry Lynch was a absolute disgrace. Nolan should be ashamed of himself.
You can rewatch the show here.